Soil tested at Palmerton homes

About half of owners the EPA approached allowing lead analysis.

October 18, 2002|By Jeff Christman Special to The Morning Call -- Freelance

About half of the 1,600 households in Palmerton at which the Environmental Protection Agency wants to take soil samples have agreed, officials from the agency told the Palmerton Citizens for a Clean Environment Thursday night.

That permission allows the agency to conduct the soil testing for lead contamination that will help get a property on the list for a spring cleanup, part of the agency's Superfund project around the old zinc smelting plant.

The EPA wants to test 2,800 properties in the area, which has been a Superfund site for 18 years, for lead contamination that the agency believes was caused by the zinc smelting and more recent metals reclamation work.

Just more than 900 households returned the form that the EPA mailed to about 1,600 households, and of those, about 90 percent gave their approval.

Agency workers have collected about 150 of those samples so far, and the EPA expects the first results to be back in eight to 10 weeks, around the holidays.

If the test results indicate soil remediation is necessary, the work would begin in the spring.

Those found to have soil with concentrations of 650 or more parts per million of lead, or 400 ppm, in areas where children play, eventually would be asked for permission to conduct indoor tests.

The testing work and the cleanup of contaminated soil that would follow is being paid for by Viacom Inc. and Horsehead Industries, the New York companies that own the assets of the former zinc companies.

The EPA plans to follow up with those who didn't respond to the mailing by sending a certified letter and the agency will telephone the 90 households or so which declined the testing to ensure they understand what it means.